Gamereactor recently had a conversation with Resident Evil 2 developers, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi and Tsuyoshi Kanda, in which the developers share details about the game’s combat system and other things.

“I really want to make sure that everyone knows that just because the game is in an over-the-shoulder perspective, a third-person perspective, it’s not RE4,” said Harabayashi. “RE4 was over-the-shoulder but at a conceptual level it was designed to be more of a shooter game, so you had plenty of ammo and you were constantly moving forward through the gameplay, but Resident Evil 2, the new game, it is over-the-shoulder but in terms of gameplay experience it’s a classic survival horror like Resident Evil 1 to 3 – the originals – were. Going to that perspective doesn’t just mean the gameplay’s going to be Resident Evil 4 style, and that’s reflected in the combat as well. It’s more of an old-school style than a Resident Evil 4 style shooter.”

Resident Evil 2 will be released on January 25, 2019

“That means that of course the combat features heavy resource management style of classic survival horror games,” adds Kanda. “You’re not gonna have that many bullets, so you’re gonna have to decide for every zombie you meet: do you wanna take it on and fight or do you wanna run away and strategically save your bullets for another time? It’s also got that backtracking, Metroidvania style of exploration in from the old games, so the combat style is definitely more the classic mould.”

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“The combat will be tense but satisfying, so even though we’re saying it’s not a shooter we do want you to have satisfying shooting when you do use your gun, so whenever you aim at a zombie and take out the right body parts or aim at the right parts of it, it’ll be very difficult and it’ll almost be a tense procedure every time you do it. But if you can get it right, I think you’ll be very satisfied having pulled off a good shot, so you don’t need to worry about it not being fun to do.”